


Diplomat and Dissident

by RelicIron



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: Chronic Insomnia, Chronic Pain, Concealing Pain, Former-sith Consular, M/M, Malnourishment, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rating May Change, Slow Burn, Wasting away, Zenith may be a prickly bastard but he is Concerned, hopefully, liberties are taken with rattataki biology and appearance differs from in-game
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:42:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26418919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RelicIron/pseuds/RelicIron
Summary: He finally finds Zenith, after all this time, but Faun doesn’t realize what having the observant twi’lek back will mean for the pain he’s trying to hide. But once things are finally out in the open, and Faun’s on the mend, Zenith comes to some realizations himself.
Relationships: Male Jedi Consular | Barsen'thor/Zenith
Comments: 18
Kudos: 21





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Bioware better pony up and give us back Zenith with a romance or there's gonna be blood.  
> Until then, I'll have this, but I reserve the right to make a completely different fic with these two if they do finally give us the romance we deserve.  
> Faun is [here](https://reliciron.tumblr.com/post/628854049858568192/a-string-bean-consular-hes-supposed-to-be) and [here](https://reliciron.tumblr.com/post/622604702481301504/im-having-trouble-keeping-my-interest-on-swtor) if you want to know what he looks like.

They’re pinned deep in the bowels of a communication relay station tucked near the cliffs on the Markaran plains.

And there’s currently a very good chance that they’re all going to die.

More than normal, at least.

Not surprising.

He’s down to 5 now. Loyal men and women, but they’d need more than loyalty to last through this horde of Imperials.

Maybe if Graystar were still here, they’d have gotten more intel on just how many troops were in this hell hole.

But he’d made a choice: hold out for more information and risk losing their chance at finding the cipher to the Imperials’ encryption protocols, or act now while the intel was hot and brave the unknowns between the door and their objective.

He’d been too hasty.

Sloppy.

Too many weeks had gone by with too little progress. The Imps were knuckling down harder, and the resistance cells were having trouble communicating properly through all the surveillance and extra patrols.

They’d needed this damn cipher, and now they were going to die for it.

At least he’d go out with a rifle in his hands. It was more than he could say for…

For the jedi.

Nearly seven years and he still felt that pang of loss whenever he thought of him.

He may have preferred negotiations, but Master Aurek could never really hide the pleased look he got during a good fight. He would have wanted to die fighting, not trapped like a rat on an exploding ship.

Zenith grit his teeth as a blaster bolt nearly grazed his temple, taking aim at the Imp that almost got lucky. They’d been stuck behind some cargo crates for so long that the shot he put between the bastard’s eyes wasn’t even satisfying at this point.

There’s nothing left at this point. They’d already thrown everything they had at the Imperials to try and break through long enough to escape, but the moment they put down one group, another would rush in to take their place.

Now they were down to a single thermal detonator.

But that wasn’t something they could use on the Imps.

It was the usual resistance insurance policy: don’t let them take you alive.

Their blasters were starting to overheat, and all six of them are sporting enough wounds to make a successful retreat unlikely.

The detonator might be all they have left at this point.

He’s about to give the order to stagger their shots, code for ‘let the Imps get close so we can take as many with us as we can’, when something large barrels into the Imperial line and bowls over nearly four of them.

Large, and scaly.

He blinks in surprise as he takes in the rings in the trandoshan’s nose and their milky right eye.

_Qyzen?_

What the blazes was _Qyzen Fess_ doing here?!

But it’s clearly not some battle fatigue hallucination, as he can feel the confusion and hesitation from his remaining men.

“Focus on the Imps!” he snarls to them over the hail of bolts.

The old man clearly hadn’t lost his touch, if anything his swings seemed even stronger now and panic quickly consumes the Imps around him.

They pop up out of cover and all but forget the resistance fighters in their haste to escape the massive hunter.

And then there’s a flash of light streaking into the melee.

It slips easily into the ranks before the unmistakable sound of a lightsaber igniting pulls Zenith’s attention.

Searing green light spins wildly through the crowd as the deep hum warps and curls around the sound of cut off screams.

No… this is…

The brightness of the dual ended blade makes seeing the features of the wielder almost impossible in the relative gloom of the corridor.

But he’d know those movements anywhere.

He keeps firing. Forces his men to keep firing.

Questions can, _and will_ , come later. But for now there are Imps to put down.

–

It’s genuinely difficult to focus on the battle at hand, when his senses keep trying to reach toward the familiar presence crouched behind the improvised barricade.

He didn’t need to look. Zenith always had a fairly unique signature in the Force, and he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t been keeping his senses peeled for said signature ever since Lana had pulled him from the carbonite.

The Imperials had the severe misfortune of being between him and his final, wayward crew member. And that simply could not stand.

He keeps his strikes efficient, tries to conserve his energy. There’s no way of knowing yet how many are injured, if _Zenith_ is injured.

The thought of it makes something vicious pulse through him, but he keeps calm. A battle is no place to lose your head.

When the last of the troopers sink smoking to the floor, only then does he rise from his combat stance and sheath his saber.

The air is choked with the scent of burning flesh and Faun’s eyes water as he makes his way over to the small squad of fighters. And there in the middle, lined up right against the crate with the other men, was Zenith. Looking even surlier than normal.

Faun doesn’t even try to hide the relieved fondness that breaks across his face.

It had been so long with no word, he’d started fearing the worst.

“Zenith,” he breathes, “You’ve no idea how happy I am to have finally found you.”

When he tries to get closer, the other resistance members tense and nearly raise their weapons again.

“Leave him,” Zenith bites out to them.

And they do, but they’re still watching him like a hawk and Faun has to stifle a snort of amusement.

Over-vigilance. Clearly Zenith had trained them himself.

Although in their defense, jedi are a rare breed these days and Rattataki jedi are almost non-existent besides himself, so they can’t truly be blamed for their caution.

“So,” he says as he eyes Faun, “I guess this means you’re not dead.”

He almost laughs, would have, if he hadn’t seen the simmering anger in Zenith’s eyes.

“What the blazes happened?” the twi’lek growls.

Faun cocks his head, “You haven’t heard?”

“Eternal Empire attacked Balmorra, and when they were done, the Imps came back, so no, I’ve been a little busy,” he grits out.

_He thinks I abandoned him…_

It’s clear enough, even without the dull thump of betrayal and anger pulsing around him in the Force.

“I promise you Zenith, if I could have sought you out before now, I would have, but-”

His ear flicks back as he registers the sound of hurried footsteps.

A lot of footsteps.

And from the sudden grim look, Zenith hears it too.

“Another wave, get ready!” he barks to his men. They look like they’re minutes from collapse, but they hunker down all the same.

Zenith’s eyes met his own and he glares.

“You own me an explanation later, jedi.”

Faun dips his head before taking his place alongside Qyzen between the oncoming soldiers and the resistance fighters.

“Of course.”

–

Relief and anger war through him as he takes in the jedi.

He looks almost the same as he did seven years ago. More so than he should. Like time hadn’t touched him.

But clearly something had.

His fighting is different.

Stronger.

Zenith watches in quiet surprise as Faun lifts a multi-ton shipping container and flings it at the door most of the soldiers keep coming through like he’s tossing a ration bar.

But despite his new power, his combat performance seems… off.

In the heat of battle he seems fine, maybe even faster than before, but in the seconds between, when he’s rushing over to the next group, his steps are stilted and slower than they should be.

The difference is slight, and it could just be the years had taken their toll on his stamina instead of his face, but it makes something in Zenith uneasy.

It’s been a long time since he’s observed the jedi, but he’s seen this behavior enough to recognize it.

It’s the way Faun moves when he’s in pain.

He’s snapped out of his thoughts when the last of the soldiers fall, and the jedi rises from his stance.

Between the blocked door and the addition of Qyzen and Faun, this is the best opportunity for escape they’re going to get.

“Should leave while we have the chance,” Zenith says.

Faun nods, “It would be wise, yes, I can go ahead and help thin their numbers while Qyzen stays with you.”

“Is best stay together,” the older man rumbles.

“He’s right, and we have wounded. Need you to help us move.”

Faun frowns but goes along with it. Bending to pull the most injured, Avarn, from the ground and supporting his weight as they finally break cover and hurry (as best they can) toward the entrance he and Qyzen had come through.

They do still run into opposition, but it’s fairly minimal, likely still recovering from the jedi and the old man mowing through.

There are sounds of relief all around when they finally see daylight, but Zenith doesn’t relax until they’ve made it to the nearest safe house.

As much as he ever relaxes at least.

Once they’ve secured the building, they lay out the wounded from most to least serious, and Faun wordlessly settles in to mend them.

Zenith can see that he’s using his strength judiciously, healing the worst of their wounds before moving on to the next. Faun makes two full rotations among his men, before Zenith is satisfied enough to let the jedi use his power on him too. There are a few blaster burns of varying severity littering his body and eaten through his armor, but he’s dealt with far worse.

Faun looks visibly tired now. He can see it in the slope of his shoulders and the pinch of his brows, like he’s fighting a headache, but he’d promised Zenith an explanation, and dammit he was going to get one.

“Alright, Aurek, what happened?”

A colorless eye flicks up to him, before he continues his work and Zenith settles further against the wall he’s sitting against.

“Darth Marr’s flagship was destroyed, and both of us were taken prisoner before being brought before their Eternal Emperor,” Faun’s lips twist as an echo of anger passes over his face. With how serene he used to be, it’s unusual.

“An emperor by another name perhaps, but still the sith emperor,” and now his voice is very nearly a growl and Zenith feels himself tense further, “his son gave me an opportunity, so I killed him.”

He blinks, caught off guard for a moment, before old caution filters back in.

“It wasn’t that easy,” and it isn’t a question.

Faun smiles tiredly, “It never is.”

He goes on to describe the events that followed. How he’d been improperly frozen in carbonite for over five years. How that sith woman, Lana, had saved him and they’d escaped to find and repair an ancient warship. Their time on a smugglers’ port and the fight with Arcann. The Alliance. Allying with the mandalorians. Bringing down Arcann, and then Vaylin. And the final showdown with this ‘Valkorian’ inside his mind.

All before speaking of the battles on a machine planet, the republic spy’s false betrayal, the fight on Ossus, Onderon, Mek-sha, and Corellia.

He’s long since finished healing Zenith before he makes it to the present.

“The Republic wants to help Balmorra again, so they sent me in much like they did before to help the resistance cells. It’s pure chance that the one I made contact with was yours. They told me their commander had led a strike at the relay station, and that you’d been gone far too long, so I went looking for ‘him’. I did not know it would be you there, but I suppose I should have suspected.”

He sags against the wall, lets his head rest against the cracked plaststeel and his eyes slip shut. Exhausted from healing Zenith and his men, but still talking quietly.

“I found Qyzen first, Felix and Nadia came much later, and I’ve heard from Tharan, but every time I sent out feelers to find you, they came up empty.”

He sighs, “I shouldn’t have been surprised, I knew you, of all people, would be difficult to find. Its how you’ve stayed alive all these years. But still… I… feared the worst.”

There’s a brief moment of irritation that wells up in him. He can take care of himself, he doesn’t need a jedi babying him, he did just fine before he ever met Faun Aurek and he’s done fine since.

But as much as he wants to deny it, there’s something… warm? Not sure, but something that’s a little pleased that Faun had worried about him. Not because he was the cell commander or one of the few people who could reliably get things done in the resistance, but… because he was Zenith, because he was a friend.

That… wasn’t something he was prepared to think about right now.

He sighs and when he looks up, Faun’s watching him, his one working eye sharp despite the obvious exhaustion.

“If it were anyone else telling me that story, I’d shoot them for lying but…,” he clenches his teeth and wills the festering, misplaced anger away, “I believe you.”

A soft smile breaks across the jedi’s face, and his throat goes tight.

“Should rest now, I’ll take first watch.”

A deep snort nearly makes him jump, and he turns to see Qyzen who’s finishing up bandaging the remaining wounds on Zenith’s men.

“Fight was good, Hunter is battle weary, must rest too. Stay with Herald. Will watch,” he assures, before rising and plodding towards the safe house door.

He hears Faun chuckle at his irritated look.

“Qyzen’s the head of a large clan now, he’s gotten a little more assertive about things like this.”

Zenith snorts.

It seems he’s more out of the loop than he’d thought.


	2. Chapter 2

They get back to the cell the next day and the relief in the resistance is palpable (even if he does see two or three people exchanging credits). Zenith immediately makes his way to their makeshift war table: a common holotable with about 500 pounds of extra machinery hooked to it to heavily encrypt the transmissions and properly coordinate with similar tables in other cells.

Apparently, during their time apart, Zenith had dragged the scattered remnants of the Balmorran resistance back together and whipped them back into a formidable fighting force. But the damage from it’s previous incarnation’s dissolution was still being felt, one such example was their continued lack of a proper, defensible central command.

And that, it seems, was Zenith’s price for rejoining Faun on Odessen.

A development that he’d not even considered possible, to be honest.

He was not so selfish as to take Zenith away from his people when they still needed him. The last time the war had been all but won on Balmorra. There had been little left for the revolutionary to do when the fighting stopped, so falling in with Faun hadn’t been that strange. Especially with his plans of entering politics. He hadn’t said as much, would likely never admit it, but Zenith was clever enough to recognize the opportunity to learn diplomacy from observing Faun.

But now? The man was one of the unofficial leaders of the resistance and in the middle of the renewed war for his planet’s freedom. He was _needed_ on Balmorra. So when he’d named the ‘price’ of once again accompanying Faun, he’d been very much taken aback.

At least for a moment.

He didn’t dare question Zenith’s motivations for fear of him misunderstanding Faun’s hesitation. For all of his cold confidence, the man was surprisingly sensitive to perceived rejection in more personal matters.

And stars above, Faun would never reject his company.

So while he didn’t understand _why_ Zenith had simply assumed he was coming with him, he wasn’t about to look a gift nerf in the mouth.

He’d even already picked out a location.

The Okara droid factory.

It seemed that even under the leadership of Tai Cordan, they had never managed to tame Okara. The droids still ran rampant, and the area was heavily restricted for nearly a kick in every direction to keep people safe.

The factory was still a death trap and even the eternal empire had found it too much to handle.

But of course, where everyone else saw a dangerous killing field, Zenith saw an opportunity.

Thanks to the work of nearly five different very talented slicers and a few former-employees, they’d developed a data-spike that might turn those hordes of droids into an endless supply of hyper-vigilant guards.

Assuming it worked.

The trouble was getting it **in** there.

Which was a task that Faun was uniquely qualified to do.

The probe droids at Okara had powerful sensors, strong enough that there wasn’t any cloaking technology that could get someone passed them.

But the Force was one thing they couldn’t quantify.

Shadow trained jedi were unusual in the order, straddling an awkward place between light and dark. There were few reasons to learn to cloak outside of assassination and subterfuge, which were things the order preferred to believe they were above.

Knowing such a difficult skill was, perhaps, another reason they’d chosen to convert him, rather than let him rot in a prison cell, but it always seemed to come in handy.

Naturally, Zenith was going with him, he’d come up with the plan after all and Faun knew his shape well enough by now that he didn’t have to concentrate much to hide it properly.

It was clear that Zenith’s men were still very nervous about the operation and they definitely didn’t trust Faun, but their leader was firm. It would work. And he only just managed to hide the pleased smile that Zenith’s faith in him inspired.

All things considered, the mission went well. They’d taken their time, giving the probe droids a wide berth and hugging the walls when possible. Thanks to Faun’s increased power, they got all the way to the central command console without being discovered once, and the battle that had occurred during the spike’s download had been brutal, but swift.

It was only when they cautiously walked the halls, uncloaked and in full view of the probes, that they were certain the plan had worked.

A simple addition to the droids’ friend-foe code had marked all senior resistance members as ‘friends’, allowing them and those accompanying them safe passage through the factory while still reacting violently to anyone else.

Zenith quickly led him to the rooms he’d picked out in the factory blueprints and they both herded out the droids lingering there before calling in the others.

The people who arrived were all a good shade or two paler than normal, but wore bright, excited smiles.

“Commander… this is… this is amazing!” said a dark-skinned zabrak woman as she looked around in awe.

“It will be,” Zenith replied curtly, but she hardly seemed to mind.

Faun helped with some of the heavy lifting while Zenith oversaw the building and reinforcement of a blast door that was outside of Okara’s systems, so the droids wouldn’t tamper with it. They created several layers of doors and barricades, both to protect them from the droids, should they overwrite the spike’s algorithm, and from any enemies that managed to sneak or shoot their way through.

All of this, before overhauling a damaged vent in the back room to make an escape route into the mountains behind the factory, should the worst occur.

It wasn’t a base yet, not really, there was a lot of work ahead of them to make it a proper command center, but they had an almost unshakable foothold now, and it was only a matter of time and muscle before they transferred enough equipment to settle in completely.

Faun can’t stay for it, he says so, but assures Zenith that he would come back in a week or so to pick him up once he’d gotten things under control here. But all he’d gotten was a glare and a gruffly spoken, “No, I’m going with you now.”

It seemed that he’d already explained the situation to his second and discussed his expectations. He’d demanded to be kept apprised of the situation on Balmorra and consulted on any major offensives, but had assured them he’d return if things went wrong.

They’d nodded sharply and promised to keep in touch. As Zenith turned and made his way back to Faun with his bag slung over his shoulder, he could almost watch as the burden of command settled over the new acting commander.

Zenith was a hard and exacting man, if he trusted this person to lead in his absence, then they’d likely do well. Their leader would never accept anything less.

–

Terana would do fine in his place.

She was one of the old guard, a senior fighter from a neighboring cell to Zenith’s old one.

She knew her business and, he admits to himself, she was a bit better with people than he was, so with the new headquarters and her leading the charge, the resistance would definitely thrive.

He set it to the back of his mind for now.

The Republic were just as flaky as always, but from what his men had to say about the Alliance, it was a far more reliable ally to make. That it was being led by Faun Aurek only cemented that.

Going with him may not make the most sense, but there was still a good reason for it. Reason enough that he could convince himself it was worth the resistance commander leaving his men. Though by the look Terana had shot him when he said his goodbyes, she wasn’t entirely buying it.

She’d heard him talk about his time with the jedi during these long few years, not often, but enough that she recognized who the man was when she’d met him. She’d told him once that he spoke of Faun almost as much as he brought up Graystar, which was… jarring. And when Zenith had told her he was leaving with him, she’d gotten this irritating smirk on her face that made him want to hit something.

Faun was one of the very **very** few people in the galaxy that he could confidently label as a friend, as someone he could completely trust.

And he’d spent the last 7 years believing he was dead.

The thought of Faun leaving again, of not knowing where he was, if he was in trouble again, it made something twist uncomfortably in his chest, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep if he stayed behind.

He’d already lost enough sleep over it. Over the mourning of his friend.

But now they’re on the station, heading for the doors leading to Faun’s ship, and the moment they open to admit them, Zenith nearly chokes.

It’s the Defender.

It’s a little more worn, a dent here and there in the durasteel walls that hadn’t been there the last time he’d seen it, but the pealing, yellowed sticker Nadia had stuck to the wall above the cockpit entryway is still there and despite the years, it still smells the same. Incense and fresh laundry and… safety.

An almost imperceptible shudder goes through him as muscles that have been clenched for years jerkily unwind.

It had been a problem when he’d returned to the fight on Balmorra.

He hadn’t realized just how comfortable he’d gotten on the Defender until he was back in the trenches and his rustiness was plain to see. He’d had to dodge nearly three separate attempts on his life before he’d relearned the level of caution he’d had before the jedi.

It had taken months of traveling with Faun and the others before he’d relaxed into his place there, coincidentally not long after he’d started to trust the man.

Zenith actually slept on the Defender, not in fits and starts interspersed with roaming the halls or checking his equipment, but honestly **slept**. Deep and restful in a way he simply hadn’t allowed himself since he was a boy. He ate around the others instead of taking his food and scarfing it down where he could do so unseen in safety. Even cleaning his weapons was eventually done in the open without fear of being caught without a working blaster.

That ship, and most of the people on it, were safe. **He** was safe. And he hadn’t even realized the glorious comfort of it all until it was all gone.

Until Faun was gone.

He shakes himself but allows his fingers to slide against the wall as he follows Faun to the bridge. Sentimental in a way he normally doesn’t allow.

–

The trip back to Odessen is long, and after making sure Zenith is settled, Faun finally allows himself to retire to his old room.

He still sought it out sometimes, when things got to be too much and he needed to escape from the ever shifting emotion of the base. Which was increasingly often as the months turned to years. He grunts as he sits down, feels the ache run up his spine and settle like hot needles in his joints. It takes several long minutes before he can will himself to undress and check for injuries, and he’s relieved when he finds only a small burn on his forearm.

It’s simple enough to heal, even with his exhaustion, but he’s glad he found it in the mirror before someone else pointed it out.

He so very tired.

It seems like every day it gets harder to keep it up.

A smile finds it’s way across his face as he remembers the man in the other room curled stubbornly in the copilot’s seat.

Words truly can’t describe how good it is to see Zenith again. To know he’s safe and that he’s still the sharp eyed man he used to be. So much had changed while he was asleep that he’d learned to appreciate the constants, and the twi’lek’s prickly nature was just that.

It’s steadying in a way he’s been craving.

Zenith could always be relied upon to speak his mind, to see details that few others noticed, and to quickly formulate a plan. He spared no worry for optics or diplomacy, only what was the most efficient method to achieve a goal.

It was a desperately needed balance to the overly cautious nature the masters had instilled in Faun.

He rarely went with Zenith’s plan directly, but it was often a solid baseline to build upon. And to have that bedrock back was a profound relief.

He doesn’t even try to sleep. Despite the long hyperspace jump, there’s no point in it. So he does his best to sink into a healing meditation to sooth the aches that continue to throb through his bones.

They arrive at Odessen both to soon, and not soon enough, and then it’s nothing but careful introductions interspersed with warm(ish) reunions. He’d been pleased to see Qyzen on Balmorra, but that was unsurprising given their good rapport before. Seeing Zenith seemed to bring a spark of happiness to Felix that he’d been sorely needing lately, and naturally Nadia was just as exuberant as always to see a familiar face.

His reactions to the later two were stiff but not nearly as much as he would be if they were strangers, so Faun had to assume he was glad to see them at some level.

He knew Lana and Theron from the whole mess with Revan, and he still clearly distrusts them both, but not so much as to cause a fuss. The other sith and imperial forces freely wandering the halls were a much harder pill to swallow, but after a very **very** long debate, he was willing to give it a chance.

One _singular_ chance. As the moment one of those ‘Imp scum’ tried something he’d feed them their own entrails, and Faun knew full well the Zenith was never the joking type.

By the time he’s seen to Zenith’s accommodations and discussed his integration, he’s completely exhausted and in more pain than he’s willing to endure to continue playing leader for another few hours. So he complains of a headache and begs off the rest of the day’s work to retire to his quarters where he can relax without anyone seeing.

Perhaps with Zenith here, and the last of his old friends restored, things might get a bit easier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was hoping I could slip a fuller description in naturally, but I haven't figured it out so I'm just going to give you a quick run-down.  
> Faun was initially trained as a personal assassin to a sith lord, and when he outlived his usefulness, she tried to get rid of him by sending him to attack a smaller Jedi temple. He was defeated by the masters there, severely injured, and rehabilitated both mind and body until he was eventually given the ok to start his padawan-ship on Tython. Only the masters at the temple he attacked, and the ones on the council know of his history.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick warning, Faun is heavily emaciated, and there's a description of it. He does not have an eating disorder, the lack of nutrition comes from his damaged organs. Bumping the rating up to mature for this reason.  
> Poor Zenith has no idea how to handle this sort of thing but he's Trying and he WILL make that idiot take better care of himself even if he has to drag him kicking and screaming the whole way.  
> I'm posting this before I can think of another reason to fuss over it for another few days.

Faun’s not acting right.

The sluggishness during certain points in battle, the careful way he walked sometimes, the flashes of anger he’d seen, they were the tip of the iceberg.

Some of them were good changes, granted.

He was freer with his emotions. A little harsher. Like the few years he’d been awake had weathered his faith in the galaxy as a whole, and he was now less concerned with maintaining his serene front. And he’d generally stopped trying to cover the remnants of his Imperial accent, content to let go of his facade as a born and bred Republic citizen. The jedi order had been decimated by the eternal empire, and while Faun had told him that he’d always care for them and help when needed, he no longer considered himself a jedi.

These were all good things as far as Zenith was concerned. He’d seen Faun struggle with his tranquility, and he honestly seemed more at peace now than when he’d been trying to force it.

But the rest…

He seemed to tire out faster. Much faster. And when he was done, he was **done** , often turning snappish and frustrated.

His gait was different, he walked gingerly like every step hurt, but his bare toes seemed fine where they poked out of his foot wrappings.

There were times when he seemed to have trouble concentrating and he’d stare off into space. Zenith was used to him getting lost in his thoughts now and then back the old days, but this was different. His gaze unfocused and he’d just… stare. Dead eyed. Until someone said his name.

He flinched slightly when anyone touched him, and Zenith could see the tension in his jaw wind tighter the longer the contact lingered.

But probably the most concerning: Faun ignored injuries.

He’d always had trouble admitting when he was hurt, preferring to use his strength to help others before himself, but he had always treated it immediately as soon as he was somewhere safe where his abilities were no longer needed. Now he calmly attended debriefs looking like there was nothing wrong until someone pointed out a deep gouge soaking his robes in blood, or a burn that had eaten through his armor and melted it to his skin. Things that **no one** would be able to ignore, but he always had a look of surprise on his face before he shuttered it behind more appropriate emotions.

Like he hadn’t even felt them.

He wasn’t sure if the others didn’t notice, or they just didn’t want to see it, but something was very wrong, and the longer Zenith watched it go on, the more it worried him.

Whatever was going on with Faun, he wasn’t going to admit it. He’d met a few of his people before and he was pretty sure it was a rattataki thing to hide weakness. That Faun was a stupid selfless jedi only made it worse.

If Zenith wanted to find out what was happening, he’d need to confront him directly.

\--

It’d been in the middle of the night and he’d been unable to sleep. After tossing and turning for over an hour, he’d given up and started wandering the base, subtly keeping an eye on the Imps on the midnight shift to calm his restlessness. When he got bored of stalking the halls and dock, he’d made his way to the elevator that took him up to the top of the cliffs above. And there, lit in moonlight and leaning heavily against the railing, was Faun.

Physically, he looked fine, but there’s a haggard look to him that puts Zenith on edge.

Here, alone, might be his best chance talk to him. So he lengthens his stride and crosses over to where his friend is looking out over the canyon beyond.

Faun swivels his gaze over to him as he gets close, and with how glassy his eye looks, he almost leaves. It’s not fair to interrogate the man when he’s clearly not all there, but the colder, calculating part of himself makes him stay. He’d be dead many times over if he ignored that part, and right now it’s urging him to strike while Faun is so obviously vulnerable and unable to argue properly.

He didn’t get where he is today by playing fair.

Faun gives him a tired nod, “Trouble sleeping?”

His accent is thicker like this, and despite the years since he’d revealed his origins, the slight lilt of Kaas he’d picked up from his original mistress still sent a brief thread of unease through Zenith.

“Yeah. Not sure how anyone does with that many Imps crawling around in there.”

He hears a huff of amusement and watches Faun return his gaze to the canyon.

“You?”

“I’m fine… just needed a bit of fresh air,” he says, and while the tone is normal Zenith grits his teeth at how… robotic it sounds. Like he’s always got an ‘I’m fine’ at the ready to shove off onto anyone who asks. There’s no point in beating around the bush, and Zenith had no patience for it anyways.

“You’re not.”

Faun goes rigid next to him, before mechanically relaxing.

“I’m just tired, that’s all.”

“That’s bantha shit, and you know it,” he growls. He doesn’t appreciate being lied to, especially from a friend.

His eyes, one a near colorless grey and the other an unseeing milk white, are fixed on him now and in the gloom they look absolutely eerie.

“Zenith… I don’t know what you’re-”

“Don’t give me that. There’s something wrong. Your fighting’s sloppy, you move like you’re walking over broken glass, and half the time you look like you’re not even all there. It’s way more than ‘just tired’. You may be able to hide that kind of crap from everyone else, but not me,” he grits out.

There’s surprise written across his face, and oddly enough fear, before it all gets paved over in a calm but vaguely hostile look.

“And what of it?”

It’s a warning. A very clear warning to back off. This man could take him apart at the molecular level but he knows full well that Faun would never hurt him, so the flare of aggression falls flat.

He crosses his arms and glares the taller man down, “You’re going to tell me what it is. Now.”

And just like that his hackles lower and the fight drains out of him. He peers down at Zenith with the sort of bone deep weariness that he’s only caught glimpses of during the past few weeks.

That his bluff was so fragile was alarming, like he didn’t even have the strength to hold it up for more than a few seconds.

“I am tired, Zenith. Very… very tired, “he laughes weakly, “among other things.”

“And they are?” Faun sounds so exhausted he almost wants to take it down a notch, but he’s not giving him a chance to weasel out of this, so he keeps his tone firm.

“Would you like a list?” he smirks, but it dies when Zenith keeps staring silently.

Faun sighs, “I have not slept properly since before the carbonite, but it’s been getting far worse since… since I killed Valkorian. I’m mostly operating on healing trances at this point.”

Zenith was very far from having a healthy sleeping schedule, but even he knew this level of insomnia was unacceptable. But Faun wasn’t finished.

“The carbonite poisoning left… unfortunate effects. Nerve pain, numbness-”

“That’s why you don’t notice injuries?”

Faun nods hesitantly, “I have trouble feeling them if they’re in the wrong spot.”

There’s a sick feeling starting in the pit of his stomach.

 _Just how much has he been hiding?_  
“Then… after Arcann stabbed me, the recovery was… very difficult. I was not fully healed by the time I was needed back in the field. Some of the transplants never acclimated properly, and there’s been no time for me to take leave to have it treated so… I have great difficulty keeping food down.”

His voice is getting lower with each admission. More run down. More defeated.

“I get the eating and the pain, but why can’t you sleep? Thought you trusted the people here,” he asks, very sure he’s not going to like the answer.

Faun doesn’t even try to smile, and his gaze goes haunted.

“Valkorian was in my mind for a year. You remember how Master Syo was, and he didn’t even have him directly inside. I was… I was so frightened I would…,” he whispers brokenly, “How could I go to sleep knowing I might not wake up in the morning as myself? That he might hollow me out in the night and wear my skin while ripping the galaxy apart?!”

Faun chokes and Zenith realizes he’s shaking when he raises a hand to his mouth.

“Day and night he tried to coax me into joining him, and every time I refused, but I could **feel** his hooks digging in deeper and there was **nothing** I could do about it.”

He’s not sure what to do, if he should reach out and grab him where he’s nearly doubled over, or stop him from reliving this just to satisfy Zenith’s damn questions, but the words are a flood now, and he’s not sure Faun can stop.

“I had to keep going, I HAD to take the throne even with him breathing down my neck, and when I did-”

A deep shudder passes through him and his pale knuckles blanch further where they’re gripping the railing.

“He… he broke me, Zenith… I couldn’t- I couldn’t even remember my own **name**.”

The admission is barely audible, and Zenith inhales sharply, finally reaching out and to grab his arm.

What he doesn’t expect is for the robes to crumple under his fingers, pressing in to a bicep that’s easily three times smaller than it looks.

Faun wrenches his arm away with a hiss, wild eyed and still mired in the memories, and Zenith worries he’s gone too far. He’s hugging himself tight, shivering uncontrollably, and something flickers across the skin he can see.

Zenith has no sense of the Force himself, but even he can feel something prickle through the air around Faun.

He shudders and sinks to his knees, bowing low until his forehead nearly touches the ground. And while Zenith **wants** to grab him again, he doesn’t dare after what’d just happened. So he crouches carefully, as close as he can get without touching, and just… stays with him. He doesn’t know what else to do.

That prickling feeling is back, sweeping just passed his lekku like it’s swirling around Faun.

Then there’s a weird shimmer, like some fine, glittery cloth is sliding off Faun’s skin. And…

Stars...

The man in front of him is almost skeletal.

Hazy, mismatched eyes are sunken deep into bruise blue sockets just above painfully hollow cheeks. The bones and tendons of his neck stand out sharp against the heavy shadows staining his translucent skin grey-purple, and through the dip of his robes Zenith can see the prominent lines of his collarbone and upper ribs. Even his clothes seem to hang off him without whatever Force trick he’d used to fill them out.

He looks like he should be dead already, and Zenith is honestly not sure how he isn’t.

_He fought on Balmorra like this._

_I took him through **Okara** like this!_

_He didn’t… he never even said anything._

Zenith freezes as Faun looks up at him with such a look of exhaustion it _hurts_.

_And he never would have, if I hadn’t pushed._

_He’d have just kept wasting away until there was nothing left. Until one day he just dropped._

A shiver passes through him and he grits his teeth.

“This is stopping. Now.”

Faun has the gall to look confused.

“You’re going to the med center, I’m getting Theron and the sith, and you’re going to tell them _everything,_ ” he growls.

Stupid jedi selflessness or weird rattataki thing, it didn’t matter, Zenith was not about to watch his friend die so soon after finding out he was still alive. So when Faun’s eyes go wide, and he opens his mouth to object, he positively _**snarls**_ **.**

“I’M NOT WATCHING YOU DO THIS TO YOURSELF!!!” he roars. Fingers flexing with the need to grab and shake him but too afraid to touch in case Faun would literally crumble in his hands.

There’s a brief moment where he thinks Faun is going to fight him, but the hard look in his eyes fractures before it fully forms and he just looks resigned.

Painfully tired and resigned.

\---

Faun looks even worse under the harsh light of the clinic, and that’s all before the doctor they’d snagged has him take off his upper robes.

Zenith sucks in a sharp breath as he sees the ravages of the last couple years written on Faun’s gaunt frame.

You can see almost every bone in his body standing out sharply against the tight draw of his skin, and once again, he’s amazed that Faun is still standing let alone fighting in this condition.

The sith, Lana he corrects himself, chokes when she sees him and Theron looks a good shade or two paler than normal. He can see the mixture of horror, rage, and confusion pinching their faces, but they keep otherwise quiet as the doctor grimly examines Faun. The man is clenching his teeth so hard Zenith can see the muscle jumping along his jaw, but he submits to the poking and prodding until the medic is satisfied. But when he turns around, Zenith almost loses it again when his eyes fall on an intricate series of narrow, interlocking plates siting half-buried in his skin, one for each vertebra. They flex and shift as he moves, polished durasteel with tiny green running lights, trailing from beneath his lower robes all the way up to the base of his neck.

His back had been rebuilt, and he hadn’t even mentioned it.

Zenith bites the inside of his cheek and forces himself to let it go.

Faun had already shared enough about his pain, he shouldn’t get angry about him holding back something like this. At least a cybernetic spine wasn’t actively killing him.

“I can tell you now he’s severely malnourished and there’s a decent amount of surface nerve damage. Beyond that, we’ll need to conduct some tests to determine just how sick he is. Your friend mentioned you’re feeling other symptoms?”

Faun frowns off to the side and pulls his robes back on jerkily. It’s only now that it occurs to Zenith that their friendship might not be the same after this.

He grits his teeth.

_It doesn’t matter. I’d rather he be alive and hate me, than dead._

“Yes,” Faun replies quietly.

Lana and Theron are all but glaring at him now, but Faun is resolutely looking away.

“I am not sleeping, I haven’t in a long time. I can barely keep food down. It hurts to move, my joints and back mostly, and I often don’t realize when I’m wounded.”

The doctor presses his lips together and nods, “I suspected the stomach problems, and the pain is unsurprising, but the sleep is worrying. Do you know why?”

“Yes.”

He pauses, waiting for Faun to elaborate, but gets nothing. It seems he’s reached the end of his cooperation, but Zenith is just happy they got him this far.

“Is it medically related?”

“No.”

Realization dawns on Lana’s face, but she keeps quiet with a hard swallow.

“Very well, I’ll need several blood samples from you now, but I think the rest will have to wait until tomorrow,” he smiles kindly, “I think you’ve had enough for tonight, commander.”

It’s almost imperceptible, but Zenith sees him flinch at the title.

Lana seems to notice too, and he can almost see her mentally trade ‘commander’ for ‘Faun’ before she speaks.

“Faun, I… why didn’t you come to us?!” her voice is quiet, but no less intense.

“It’s not like we wouldn’t have understood! You’ve gone through hell, the least we could do was help you deal with the effects!” Theron adds with similar urgency. Like they’re both afraid to raise their voice in case it causes Faun to shatter.

In their defense, his condition looks delicate enough for that to be possible.

“There was never time,” he sighs, holding still as the doctor draws blood from his arm.

“Fuck that, we would have MADE time!” Theron hisses.

Faun’s eyes flash defiantly.

“And how exactly would that have happened? Were you going to tell the Eternal Empire and Valkorian to take a few months off? Speed up the reconstruction that STILL hasn’t finished yet? Should we have politely asked Vinn Atrius and the Empire to leave us alone for a bit?”

There’s a vicious edge to his voice now, like a wounded animal that’s been backed into a corner and is snapping at anything that gets too close.

He sees the way Theron’s eyes go wide as he realizes the sort of extra strain he himself had put on Faun during his betrayal, and it may be a low blow, but it works all the same and he backs down with a sick look on his face.

Lana, however, refuses to be cowed.

“Perhaps we couldn’t have stopped anything directly, but we could have shouldered more of the burden if we’d known you were struggling!”

He grits his teeth and looks away, “It doesn’t matter now, what’s done is done. I should go back to my rooms. If I don’t try to scrape out a healing trance, I’ll be completely useless in the meeting tomorrow morning.”

“No more meetings,” Zenith says. The first thing he’s said since dragging Lana and Theron here.

Faun’s gaze locks on to him and narrows sharply, he can practically _see_ his hackles raising, even if the aura of menace is undermined by how fragile he looks.

“He’s right, I think you’ve had enough for a while.” This time it’s Theron, having seemingly recovered from Faun’s barb.

“More than a while,” Lana agrees, “I think it’s best if you go on leave until you’ve recovered fully.”

“We’re in the middle of a war!” he hisses. “There’s no time for-!”

“There will **never** be time for it, but that is **precisely** how we got in this situation!” she snarls, before visibly calming herself.

“We have failed you, deeply, Faun. Theron and I should have noticed something was wrong but instead we continued to pile more stress on top of you.”

Zenith doesn’t put much stock in a sith’s ability to be truthful, but the regret in Lana’s voice sounds genuine.

“You are more than our leader, you are our friend, and we should have treated you with more care. But what’s important now is to mend the damage, both body and mind, and to that end you cannot continue like this.”

“Lana’s right. We screwed up, big time, but now we can take the pressure off. Lana, Koth, Senya, me? We can run things while you heal. The Republic won’t have their favorite jedi, but they’ll still have Alliance strike teams and supplies. You’ve got some of the most talented people in the galaxy here, I promise we can handle things while you focus on getting better,” Theron assures.

Whether their arguments finally break through to him, or Faun is just too tired to even think straight anymore, he seems to finally cave, leaning back against the medical bed and rubbing long, spidery fingers against his sunken temples.

“What are we telling everyone else?” he asks, defeated.

“Koth and Senya will be given a brief summary so they understand the situation, but everyone else who asks will simply be told that you are ill and need to recover.”

“And if they don’t accept that?”

Lana snorts, “They’ll have to if they wish to continue collaborating with us.”

It earns a flicker of a smile from him, before he frowns.

“They won’t believe it if I’m wandering the halls with that Force-illusion, and I refuse to frighten our people with the truth.”

Theron smirks, “Then I guess it’s a good thing you won’t be here.”

All three of them look at him in surprise.

“You need to get those tests done and start your treatments, but as soon as you can, you’re getting on your ship and finding a nice spot to relax. Figure if anyone alive deserves a vacation it’d be you.”

“Yes,” Lana laughs, “I do hear Rishi is lovely this time of year.”

Faun snorts, but the hunted look in his eyes finally seems to drain out.

“I’m guessing I don’t have much choice in the matter,” he says.

And this time Zenith joins them in a decisive, “No.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel very strongly that the after effects of KotFE and KotET should be further explored, because that was a LOT of medical and psychological trauma. But I'm also enough of an adult to admit that it also gives me a reason to put these two on a nice remote beach on Rishi.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mostly thoughts in this one. Talking a bit about Faun's road to recovery, and a large chunk of Zenith's perspective and exploring a little of the way he thinks.  
> I wasn't super sure where to stop it for this chapter, so sorry if it was a little abrupt.

It’s an exhausting few days, but even he has to admit that he feels freer without the constant need to hide his symptoms. He still does a little of course, he doesn’t want to worry them any more than they already are, and it’s become a difficult habit to break.

There are endless tests in the med center, and after a quick talk with Sana-Rae, she sits him down with a trio of mind healers: two Voss, one jedi.

There are no miracle cures, he knows this, even with Arcann’s cleansing the man still visibly struggles at times to maintain his current path, and he himself had been through plenty of therapy when he was younger. So Faun understands going in that they won’t snap their fingers and suddenly have him back to normal.

What they DO manage is to lance open the calcified wound in his mind and carefully guide him through the release of the pain and fear that had been festering inside.

It’s ugly, it takes hours, and by the end of it, both himself and the Voss pair are absolutely exhausted and covered in sweat. It takes a few more sessions of in-depth meditation to make sure he’s got it all out before the jedi steps in to take it from there.

She helps him set up a few thin mental barriers, not to stifle his memories and emotions, but just to give him some warning if something is triggered and clarity to examine those feelings without getting caught up in it. And while it is definitely cheating, they decide it’s worth it at this point to block out the worst of his memories from accessing his mind while he sleeps. Further down the road, when he’s more capable of handling it, he would remove them to continue his healing.

It’s a lot of work alongside the host of medical treatments.

As he’d thought, his replacement stomach never fully adapted to his body and was now missing a large portion of it’s native flora. So medications needed to be administered for that alongside a horde of different emergency supplements to start undoing the years of malnutrition.

They gave him a few immediate injections for the nerve damage, and the agonizing pins and needles that followed as they re-connected quickly had the doctors adding a painkiller too.

A few exercise and stretching regiments were suggested, and a massage protocol was downloaded onto C2-N2’s hard drive. Then it was down to the logistics of packing and figuring out how to (almost) cut himself off from the Alliance.

With C2 and 2V’s help, he collected about two weeks worth of food and had the Defender’s water tank filled along with a few more of the basics, mostly emergency supplies and warm weather clothes.

He’d be taking an encrypted, long-range comm with him, in case something went horribly wrong and they needed him back, but he had the sneaking suspicion that they wouldn’t call even if they did. Their concern was justified, but it still rankled.

The only thing left was to pick someone non-essential to take with him, because neither Lana nor Theron trusted him sit on the beach like a good boy without supervision.

It was more than a little offensive, but they were firm. He would NOT be allowed to go alone, not until he’d made significant progress in healing and they felt assured he wouldn’t do anything stupid.

His thoughts immediately turned to Zenith, but…

A vacation, even if it was more for recovery than pure pleasure, was definitely not something he thought the hardened man would like.

Qyzen was in a similar situation. Even if there was some decent hunting around the spot he’d picked, they’d be there for a while and he’d certainly get bored.

Felix was out of the question. He had his own recovery to worry about and it wouldn’t be a good idea to mix it with Faun’s own.

That meant the only one left of his original crew was Nadia, and while he loved her dearly, she was… a little too upbeat for him to tolerate right now and certainly not for long periods.

In the end, they came to a sort of compromise.

He’d return every other week for a general update from the others and a few tests of his progress before leaving again with a different babysitter if the current one wanted out.

There’d been a discussion among his people, and to his surprise, Zenith had been the one to volunteer for the first shift (and that it was being labeled as a ‘shift’ was more than a little annoying).

He’d been acting odd ever since that night. Watching him closer. Though he wasn’t sure if it was out of concern or from a simple lack of trust.

He desperately hoped it wasn’t the later, but he couldn’t discount the possibility. While it had been a lie of omission, and about very personal matters, he still had _lied_ to Zenith and the man took deception of any kind very seriously. That Faun could sense anger threading through the Force around him only made him more worried that he’d done irreparable harm to their friendship.

\--

Despite the war with Zakuul and the renewed conflict with the Empire, Rishi looked the same as it had years ago when he and Faun had stalked pirates and Revanites through the jungle. They only landed briefly in Raider’s Cove for refueling, before flying further up the coast and well away from any signs of civilization or wreckage.

The cove they landed in was sickeningly picturesque, like something you’d expect to see on a cheesy vacation holo. Pristine white sand, towering palm trees transitioning into thick jungle behind the ship, and turquoise waves breaking against the shore. The small bay was too shallow for any large predators in the water, and they could more than handle anything attacking them on land.

All in all: the perfect spot.

It was awful.

As much as he hated the constant feeling of being watched in Raider’s Cove, the quiet here was so much worse.

Balmorra was very much a _settled_ world. It wasn’t as heavily industrialized as Corellia and nowhere near like Coruscant, but there were very few ‘wild’ places left on the planet, and he’d certainly never seen any of them. Faun had dragged him to plenty of uninhabited places, but they’d only ever passed through and it was hard to really take in a place on the back of a speeder when you’re busy looking for snipers.

It wasn’t silent, the crashing waves and local animals made sure of that, but the lack of any recognizable sounds made his neck prickle. If things got this quiet on Balmorra, something was horribly wrong and a lot of people were probably about to die. He knew this wasn’t the same. The ship’s sensors, Faun’s awareness through the Force, and the shear ridiculousness of anyone following them out here unnoticed SHOULD have set his mind at ease.

But it absolutely didn’t.

So here he was, with a white knuckled grip on his rifle, sitting on the Defender’s boarding ramp as he tried to keep an eye on Faun AND the treeline at the same time.

Stars, help him. It had only been a little over a week.

It was almost a visceral _need_ to return to Odessen, where things made more sense and this damned quiet wasn’t slowly driving him insane. But Faun was here.

And he couldn’t leave him.

He knew he would have trouble with this. Knew he’d hate every minute of it. But he kept seeing his friend’s skeletal body outlined in the moonlight. The hopeless look in his eye. The shiny plates attached to his back.

As a general rule, he tried not to mourn people. You couldn’t really, if you wanted to continue the fight without going insane or getting bogged down with loss. The road to a free Balmorra was paved with the bodies of his fellow resistance fighters, and he’d long since gone numb to it out of necessity. The loss of Graystar had been the only one to stick for a long time.

Until Faun.

He’d freed the Defender from Marr’s ship, told them to run, and then hadn’t followed. The blow of his death had hit them all impossibly hard. Nadia had cried for days, Qyzen was locked in unending prayer, Felix had frantically checked comm channel after comm channel without food or rest, even Tharan and Holiday had been eerily quiet.

And he tried to let it go.

The ship had exploded, and the last any of the survivors knew, Faun had been in the reactor core telling them to abandon ship.

He was dead.

He wasn’t coming back.

There was nothing any of them could do except move on.

...but he couldn’t.

Faun lingered in the same way Graystar had. A constant thought in the back of his head. What would he have done in this situation? What sort of plan would he have made to get through X, Y, and Z? And while Graystar continued to be the brutal part of himself that broke things down into the cold calculus of war, Faun had somehow weaseled in and taken up residence as an infuriating voice of compassion. One he followed about as often as the real Faun followed HIS suggestions, but it was still there, and even he could notice the very slight shift in his decisions.

Graystar had been a hard man with exacting standards. He was thankful for it of course, he wouldn’t still be alive without his training, but you’d have to strain to call what they had a true friendship. He was a mentor and a pivotal figure in the resistance, and Zenith was his best student, nothing more.

Faun was… something different.

Zenith was an opportunist by necessity, and the chief diplomat of the Jedi Order was probably the best person he could find to help him learn to be the Balmorran party opposition. But there’d never been any lessons. No harsh standards. Faun had answered his questions and offered advice or guidance, but their talks had often strayed far outside of need-to-know information and tips on politics.

They talked about weapons and battle tactics. About the resistance and Graystar. About Balmorra and what he thought the future might look like.

And sometimes they didn’t talk at all. Faun just sat quietly at the conference table, disassembling and cleaning his lightsaber while Zenith struggled to write a speech. When he felt like the walls were closing in on him after an evening of nightmares, Faun would magically appear with a ration bar, giving him his space while staying within earshot.

He _**trusted**_ Faun. In a way he hadn’t experienced in so long that he honestly couldn’t remember the last time it had happened.

So he missed him.

A lot.

So much sometimes it hurt.

And then, like something out of a ridiculous serial holo, Faun was back.

He was alive.

A little more worn and a little bit pricklier, but alive.

It’d left him reeling, even days after arriving on Odessen.

But ‘alive’ didn’t mean ‘well’, and he hadn’t realized the toll the last few years had taken until he’d seen him that night.

They’d been separated for so many years, and not only had Faun managed to push himself to the brink, but nobody, not one of them, had noticed.

How could he leave him alone after that?

It’s like the idiot had lost what little sense of self-preservation he’d had before. Flushed it down the drain along with his ability to take care of himself.

He’d spent so long thinking he was dead, he refused to go through that again.

He wasn’t going to lose him, no matter what it took.

–

The supplement paste was disgusting. No matter what C2 did, it still tasted like boiled colicoid guts. He’d hoped for tablets, like the ones he’d taken on Odessen, but no, apparently he was so bad off that those weren’t enough anymore.

His skin and bones ached as more and more nerves reawakened, and while the stretches were manageable, protocol droid fingers were absolutely NOT made for massages and only made him more sore.

The worst part though, was wandering around without the Force-illusion.

It had become a comfort as the months passed and his appearance degraded. A precious sense of control and normalcy in a galaxy gone to hell, and without it he felt more naked that he would without clothes.

The sleep though, the sleep was worth the whole ordeal.

He spent the first week in a near coma with how deeply he slept. C2 had informed him that he’d been woken up periodically to eat and go to the fresher, but he honestly had no memory of it.

He had dreams, not all of them good, but those nightmares were old and familiar, and after the torment of the last couple years they were almost more comforting than frightening.

–

With the first two weeks over, they returned to Odessen to resupply, test Faun’s progress, and trade shifts.

Zenith hadn’t planned on that last part, but Faun had been adamant that he stay, giving him that awful smile that meant he thought he was doing something for someone’s own good.

He would have argued. Almost did. Before he realized that his tension was probably freaking the man out.

So he stayed.

He watched Qyzen board the Defender in his place, and screamed internally as it disappeared into the sky.

The days that followed passed in a blur of insomnia and work.

There was never enough things to do. And certainly not enough to distract himself from increasingly wild speculation on the different ways Faun could currently be dying.

It was stupid. Qyzen was strong enough to protect him, and even if he wasn’t Faun had shown that he was more than capable of defending himself even in his current condition. There was no reason that the beach they sat on would be any more dangerous now than it had been when Zenith was there with him.

He would be fine.

But that didn’t stop the nightmares from coming for him in his sleep.

Faun’s body frozen in carbonite, too late to revive. A lightsaber through his gut. Lightning arcing over his skin. Valkorian making him dance like a puppet on strings. The teeth of beasts, the searing heat of a blaster shot, the crush of boulders. All of it just outside of his reach.

It had him waking up in a cold sweat with a vibroblade humming in his grip.

As miserable as that damned beach was, it was leagues better than this.

He was getting on that ship when it came back, whether Faun liked it or not.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Faun knows what he wants but is chicken, and Zenith has the emotional insight of a tree stump.

It was nice to spend time with Qyzen like that, in a relaxed environment. The beasts he brought down around the area were certainly not legendary or record-breaking, but they were decent specimens and probably netted a fair amount of points for the Scorekeeper.

They’d always been on the move before, so he’d never gotten an opportunity to watch Qyzen clean and dress a kill, skin an animal, or harvest trophies. It was honestly fascinating to watch and Qyzen seemed pleased to teach him when he asked.

Still, he felt lonely.

He loved Qyzen dearly, but the man was obsessed with the hunt. There was only so long he could stand to talk about the same subject, so there were large periods of silence. Fairly companionable silence, but he still wished he had a different conversation partner to break things up.

Who was he kidding.

He knew exactly which conversation partner he was wishing for in particular.

It was almost laughable at this point.

He’d spent so long keeping his head down, trying to bull his way through all the pain and exhaustion, he hadn’t had much time to think about anything else since this whole mess began. Partially by design.

His old crew was dead, the jedi order was destroyed, there was nothing except the fight to free the galaxy from the stranglehold Zakuul kept it in. And when the Eternal Empire fell, that focus turned first to reconstruction, then to Theron’s betrayal, then once again to the never ending war with the Empire. Qyzen came back, then Nadia and Felix, and Tharan sent a few messages, but no Zenith.

It was the one thing his tunnel vision was good for. Keep busy, don’t think about the dead.

But now here he was. Nothing to do, with pain at a manageable enough level that he could think straight.

And Zenith was alive, safe, and at his side again.

The previous trip with Zenith hadn’t left much time for contemplation. He’d been busy sleeping or re-acclimating to eating regularly. The man’s presence had been a near uncomfortable buzz of nervous energy and stress the entire time, and so he’d chosen to leave him behind. Surely it’s what Zenith wanted.

But with Qyzen gone most of the day, and enough sleep under his belt to spend decent portions of time conscious, his mind could finally turn to other matters.

The dreams had ratcheted back up in intensity again. Not nearly as bad as before, and not always about Valkorian, but the war with Zakuul had left him with plenty of fuel for his nightmares.

He thought of Torian. Such a bright young man, snuffed out just like that. Thought of Vaylin and what she might have been like had her father not twisted her into a monster. Empress Acina might have been exactly the sort of leader the Empire needed to finally find peace. Darth Marr and his friendship with Satele. The long road Tau Idiar and Arn had ahead of them.

And he thought about Zenith. Though stars only knew it was a bad idea.

Zenith had been a weakness, a crack in his armor, for a long time. Originally he’d thought the man was logical to the point of cruelty, the ends justified the means no matter what. It had been his aim to correct that when Zenith had joined his crew. Try to temper his razor sharp edges into something softer, more compassionate.

But he’d been wrong.

Zenith’s way was harsh, but it was rooted in understandable circumstances. Changing him completely would be out of the question, and he’d only earn his anger and suspicion if he tried. The man was unyielding, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t challenge him to consider new perspectives in the future.

So he discussed things with him. Offering advice and opinions only when asked, but always trying to make him think. To look at problems from new angles, not just his tried and true methods.

Through their conversations, he’d found Zenith to be an incredibly cunning and intelligent man. Logical yes, but not completely unreasonable. And his almost single minded devotion to his people was highly admirable.

He’d come to greatly enjoy their talks. And as the weeks turned to months, and the pressure of finding the First Son weighed down on them, Zenith’s quiet company quickly became a refuge for him. The battles they’d fought were very different, but he saw in him the same weather-beaten warrior that he knew resided in himself.

So when Zenith’s demons came to prey on him at night, Faun tried to be there for him. Tried to steady him on those rare occasions where he was unsure. And the more he involved himself in the other man’s life, the more… _a_ _ttached_ he became.

Zenith was a handsome man, sun yellow skin and vibrant purple eyes, but he’d met plenty of attractive people in his journeys. Both Nadia and Felix were too after all. They just didn’t have that magnetic quality that Zenith did.

But Zenith had trouble allowing anyone close enough to form friendships, so whether born of paranoia or by natural inclination, Faun very much doubted the man wanted any relationship beyond platonic.

So he would be his friend and nothing more.

Zenith meant far too much to him to risk pushing him away over something the code said he wasn’t even allowed to have.

That had been then. But now…

Thinking Zenith was dead had hurt worse than just about anything Valkorian had thrown at him. It was selfish, not something a good jedi would say, but he could admit that, if only to himself.

Finding out he was alive had made all those feelings come rushing back with such intensity it had nearly paralyzed him. Years of work containing them, down the drain.

He didn’t even have the jedi code to hide behind anymore, thrown out along with his titles when Marr and Satele helped him find a new way to approach the Force.

The only thing stopping him was his fear of rejection, of making Zenith uncomfortable enough to leave.

It wasn’t worth it. The likelihood of his feelings being returned was minuscule, and he refused to put their friendship in jeopardy.

\---

When Faun returned with Qyzen in tow it was hard to tell how much progress he’d made. His eye was clearer, he looked more alert, but there was no way of knowing his true condition until he dropped the illusion.

Qyzen seemed pleased. Spoke of a nice, relaxing hunting trip and plentiful points, but had also mentioned that their friend had spent longer periods of time awake and had begun exploring the area immediately around the ship while Qyzen was away.

It made his spine itch to know that Faun was left alone in such a vulnerable state, but again he wrestled his anger down. The jedi could take care of himself, he was just being ridiculous.

Whatever the doctors found seemed to make them happy. Faun’s stomach was healing and he was finally allowed to eat solid food so long as he continued to supplement it with nutrient paste. Resupplied and cleared to leave again, Zenith found him speaking to Lana and Theron in the hanger bay the next morning, trying to think of someone else to accompany him.

“I’m going,” he states flatly.

Faun turns to him with a look of surprise.

“Going?”

“With you.” His tone brooks no argument.

But of course Faun tries.

“I didn’t think you liked it there,” he says warily.

Zenith snorts, “I don’t, but I’m going.”

There’s a brief stand off, both of them staring the other down, before Faun sighs.

“Very well, so long as you truly wish to.”

“I do,” he hefts his bag over his shoulder and stalks towards the Defender without waiting. Unwilling to risk Faun leaving without him.

By the time the jedi catches up, Zenith has already settled into the copilot’s chair and is running the pre-flight checks. The fact that he _hears_ Faun’s approach clearly, is telling. He only ever telegraphs his movement like that when he thinks Zenith is on edge.

He’s not wrong, but despite knowing that he’s about to return to that awful beach, he can already feel his muscles unwinding a little. The combination of the Defender’s familiarity and Faun being close enough to keep an eye on beginning to undo the two weeks worth of stress.

–

It’s different this time.

He still hates that beach, but Faun’s continued recovery makes it worth the trouble.

Once they’ve landed again, the illusion dissipates and Zenith can finally get a good look at him.

He definitely seems better. Nowhere near healthy, but better.

The jut of his collarbones aren’t quite as sharp as before, and his skin is less translucent, growing opaque as he gets more sun. The bruise-like shadows in the hollows of his body are still there, and he still wobbles a bit when he stands in one place for too long, but he seems less like he’s minutes from collapse.

The first night, he sleeps better than he had in the past two weeks of Faun’s absence, even with the maddening quiet of the Rishi wilds hanging over them, and that fact feels significant somehow. It’s mildly disturbing that he just has this _need_ to know where Faun is. That he’s apparently compromised without that knowledge.

This wouldn’t happen in the resistance. It _ha_ _dn’t_ happened.

Maybe this was the price of having a friend like Faun, but even as he thinks it, he knows it’s a lie. He’d trusted Graystar to a similar level, but he’d never experienced this overt worry when thinking about him. Faun was different. It was _important_ that he remain safe.

Seeing him visibly beginning to recover helps settle Zenith. Makes the quiet of the beach less loud.

He still keeps his rifle with him, but it’s on his back instead of in his hands, even as he walks along the shoreline at Faun’s side.

The other man crouches down to pick up a shell and stumbles a bit when he stands back up, but he corrects himself before Zenith’s hands make contact to steady him.

“You’ve seemed anxious lately,” he says quietly, inspecting the shell before tossing it back into the waves.

“It’s fine.”

Faun gives him an unimpressed look and he stares right back.

The jedi sighs, “You don’t like this place, and I understand that, but why did you want to return.”

He grits his teeth.

“Someone needs to keep an eye on you.” It’s the truth, but from the faint frown that creases Faun’s face, it was also the wrong thing to say.

“I suppose you don’t trust me to look out for myself anymore,” he says with a faint edge of disappointment.

To be honest, he never did. The bastard had a self-sacrificial streak a mile wide, but this wasn’t about that.

“Not that. You’re not helpless, but you need to be kept safe, and I can’t be sure of that unless I do it myself.”

His brow line climbs comically high as he stares silently at Zenith.

He’s about to ask what’s wrong before Faun hums noncommittally and continues down the beach, water splashing around his ankles as Zenith wonders what he’d said that was so strange.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not super happy with this, but thought I should post it instead of sitting on it for another few weeks and second guessing it to death.  
> It's slow, but I'm trying to drag us forward.


End file.
